The Art
of Lossless
Data Compression
vol. 21b

Here are the results of tests performed in September 2000 to compare
lossless compression of "binary" files by all known good enough programs
developed for such purpose, including RK, DC, YBS, Bzip2, IMP, RAR and 7-zip.
See Archive Comparison Test by J.Gilchrist for more details: http://act.by.net
If anybody wants to start or continue such tests,
or can suggest some other sets of files, or other compression programs,
(not sources or algorithm descriptions, executable programs only)
or knows we have missed something important,
(some new fantastic technology, an algorithm or even a program capable
of lossless compression of up to 1000:1 etc.)
please let us know immediately: artest@inbox.ru Thank you!

What's new:

Newer versions of programs are ready, they will be tested next time: RK, SBC,
ZZip, ACE, UFA, 7-zip, PkzipC, RAR32, WinRAR, ERI32, BA, PPMD, PPMonstr, UHARC.
Results of older versions are given. Next release will be ready soon.
Latest beta versions of BEE, DC, UFA, UHArc are available
from authors by e-mail request:
BEE: Andrew.Filinsky@p11.f4.n452.z2.fidonet.org
DC: EdgarBinder@t-online.de
UFA: support@7-zip.com
UHARC: Uwe.Herklotz@gmx.de
ACB, BA and PKzip are not tested on all 5029 files any more,
their results can be found in previous version ARTest vol.18b,
and in full version artest21.zip (691K) .
Results of PPMD (an open source version of PPMonstr) and UFA 0.04b1
are in full version only, BINARIES.DAT file.
Results of old programs (not updated for more than 3 years, and no homepage),
programs with low overall score will not be put to latest versions of ARTest.
And also results of programs that are known to have bugs
(in compression/decompression functions) for more than half a year.
FULL version contains all *.BAT and *.DAT files
you'll need to build 10 directories with 5029 files (artest21.zip\MAKE_BIN\*.*)
and to repeat all our tests (BINS.BAT, BINARIES.DAT).

WARNINGS:

ACB refuses to take files shorter than 257 bytes.
About 400 such files were processed with "rar a -m0 name.acb name.bin"
(see do_acb_u.bat and do_acb_r.bat in artest19.zip).
BA 1.00beta can't losslessly decompress
any file compressed with -f ,
49 files compressed with any option
(astronmy\CRLFTX~1.bin, GFEMER~1.bin, MIRAIN~1.bin, NIL_~1.bin, NIL~1.bin
README~7.bin, SAOSOU~2.bin, STARVI~6.bin, UNIV00~1.bin, ZEROME~1.bin ;
chem\ARCHIV~3.bin, ARCHIV~4.bin, DISK1_~1.bin, DISPOS~3.bin, KHEMCF~1.bin etc.)
It says nothing like "CRC fails".
BEE can't decompress some files compressed in "solid" mode.
DC 0.99.158b fails to decompress HLPCOPY..bin, but only if you compress
with "-mb5" switch and [<output>] filename like "any.dc5".
Says nothing like "CRC fails".
RK 1.03b1 was unable to correctly decompress 55 files
compressed with "-mf2" or "-mf3", reporting
> ERROR 303: CRC check failed.
All are .htm, like font\README~3.BIN , and only one byte differs
after extraction, and no problems if compressed with "-mx2" in all 55 cases.
Unfortunately, 64Mb RAM is not enough to run RK 1.03 with "-mx3":
endless swapping (virtual memory to hard disk) when compressing some binary
files (but no swapping on text files).
Bugs in tested versions of SBC and ZZip were found,
but they are removed from latest versions ZZip 0.36b and SBC 0.840b .
Problems in all other compressors were not found.
The LATEST RELEASE, and all previous versions of these tests can be found
at http://geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/1995/ and http://artest1.tripod.com/
Send your suggestions, comments to artest@hotmail.ru
With best kind regards,
A.Ratushnyak
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